“Five weeks ago, MSParc as part of the AgriTech Wales NetZero Farming Project challenged Aerialworx and 42able to design, develop and deliver a fully autonomous weed detection drone which could detect weeds and deliver a liquid treatment.
Pryderi Ap Rhisiart (Director, MSParc)
“Aerialworx accepted the challenge and what they delivered in 5-weeks is truly amazing, a fully autonomous terrain following drone which uses AI artificial intelligence to detect weeds and deliver the appropriate treatment.“
Pryderi Ap Rhisiart (Director, MSParc)
Stef Williams, CEO of Aerialworx, explained:
“Spreading pesticides on farmlands is a time-consuming process, and a lot of pesticide needs to be used to cover a whole field. Not only that, but it comes with an exposure risk to the farmer, and a spillage risk to the environment, wildlife, and livestock.”
“There is a Code of Practice to ensure safety, but this increases the workload and the financial burden for the farmer. There must be a way we can reduce carbon while also making pesticide treatment more effective. We build and fly purpose-built drones every day, so we knew this was a project we were up to tackling.”
“We always have two or three custom drone projects on the go, quite often in collaboration with Industry and Universities. One area of focus at the moment is changing the typical UAV behaviour and we’ve now successfully completed a number of projects where AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology is being used to enable the UAV to make quick and efficient decisions and change the primary or intermediate mission.”.
For this AgriTech NetZero Farm Challenge, Aerialworx designed, manufactured and delivered a fully autonomous, artificially intelligent, terrain following drone, capable of identifying weeds and delivering spot chemical treatment. This drone has been aptly named, the “Green Eagle” and watching it in operation is a delight.
Pryderi ap Rhisiart, Managing Director of M-SParc said:
“Watching the Green Eagle in operation is amazing. The Aerialworx team program the drone, so that it knows what part of the field needs scanning and then they press the button and off it goes looking for weeds and spot delivering pesticide.”
“The future of agriculture is loaded with challenges and opportunities for innovation and technology. This explored the challenges and opportunities, delivering a prototype and a glimpse of the future.”
“This is a very exciting project, developed by Welsh companies here in North Wales. There is opportunity to continue this project, creating well-paid, specialist careers in developing this technology further. It’s just another way we are proving that rural areas can be, and indeed are, at the centre of innovation.”
Head over to the MSParc website to learn more about the Green Eagle project…
One of our first flights. Great moment.
Stef Williams, CEO of Aerialworx, explained:
The entire project took us five weeks from initial concept to functional prototype. You might ask, “How is this possible in five weeks?”. Well, I wont lie, it was a lot of hard work and a lot of evenings and weekends spent in the office by the entire team.
Week 1
In a nutshell, we spent the first week researching and developing all elements of the design. As we do with all custom projects, we spent a LOT of time using specialist software packages for CAD, CAM, FEA and CFD to efficiently design and visualise the drone before it even exists. These software packages then link to our workshop machines and enable us to precisely manufacture all the components needed for the manufacturing.
Week 2
During the second week, we’re over to the workshop to make the parts. Our machines include but are not exclusive to, 3D printing, 2.5D and 3D CNC machining aluminium and titanium, composite carbon fibre work, bead blasting and anodising. Additionally, we ordered all the non-manufacture electrical components and ancillaries. At the same time all the AI software development was also taking place in parallel. This involved taking over 2000 training images and using them to train the AI to identify weeds.
Week 3
We started week three with a pile of parts and by the end of the week the team had completed the build process. All the carbon plating, tubing, mounts, hinges, screws, bolts, propellers, motors, speed controllers and computers had been put together to form the main body of the drone.
Week 4
We spent the fourth week test flying and refining all the elements. By the end of the fourth week she flew beautifully and all that remained was for us to integrate the AI software and the chemical treatment system which we had developed (basically a BMW windscreen wiper system linked into our drone computer system). All that was left was to cross our fingers and hope that all the AI training that had been going on for the past few weeks had paid off.
Week 5
In the fifth and final week, everything was brought together and fine tuned. The result was a fully functional prototype drone which could take-off automatically, fly over a selected area of a field and follow the terrain maintaining a fixed distance from the ground, scan for weeds and if found, lower in altitude and deliver the liquid payload by 8 separate spray jets, climb back to operating altitude and continue the flight and finally landing all autonomously with no pilot intervention.
Stef Williams went on to say “she is proud of the entire team and all the hard work that everyone put in over the past five weeks. Well done! x”.
“The Aerialworx team are leaders in UAV Research, Development and Consultancy for government, military and private projects”. Based at the prestigious MSParc Menai Science Park in Anglesey, North Wales, the team consists of experts within the fields of aerospace engineering, electronic engineering, software engineering and emerging UAV technologies. The Aerialworx workshop is state-of-the-art and fully loaded with the latest technology (check out the 360 virtual tour).
Call us today on 0345 4598899 to discuss your UAV project and requirements.
